Reviewed by William E. Thiele, Ph.D., spiritual director, The School for Contemplative Living
I highly recommend Dr. Elaine Heath’s new book, The Mystic Way of Evangelism, in which she shares such gems as these:
“Mystics are irresistibly drawn to become one with God and God’s purposes in the world.”
For the mystic, “the immediate presence of God and the drawing of God toward union are lived, fundamental realities,” (pp. 18-19).
I believe many drawn into the work of spiritual direction and retreat leadership are people who sense the wooing of Spirit deep in their own souls, and cannot be satisfied with anything less than regular Presence.
Dr. Heath is the first person I have heard announcing the fall of the post-modern church into a dark night of the soul. Because the church in the West is undergoing its own dark night of the soul right now, and is becoming fundamentally lost to its purpose and disoriented in its direction, it needs the “severe mercy” of great loss (p. 27).
And yet, Dr. Heath notes the potential hope when the cycle moves forward: “On the margins of society the church will once again find its God-given voice to speak to the dominant culture in subversive ways, resisting the powers and principalities, standing against the seduction of the status quo,” (p. 26).
Here I believe Dr. Heath is issuing a hopeful call to people like us to be preparing right now for the growing darkness ahead, when the institution of the church will dissolve into two misguided concerns of “doctrinal correctness and institutional loyalty,” (Cynthia Bourgeault’s phrase). We may need to surrender more than ever everything we are clinging to for the sake of the “one thing that matters” – the very presence of God/Christ in our midst.
May we deepen our practice and commitment to be present to The Way of Christ for the dark days ahead, and learn from the mystics and contemplatives of this century and the past to be one with the One no matter what else we lose/surrender in the process.